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Thursday, 5 August 2010

As one of the most polarizing issues in international relations today, the Iranian nuclear crisis has inspired tomes of analysis and predictions by scholars from all over the world. One should not be surprised then, if another opinion joins this long list.

This time, the analysis comes from Samy Cohen, a research director and professor at the Sciences-Po University in Paris and a foreign and defense policy specialist with a particular focus on Israel. In a recent article, Cohen points out the various options available to the Israeli administration in its efforts to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons.
He begins by wondering how Israel would react to the Iranian nuclear threat: Would it attack its eastern neighbor if the United States failed to secure an agreement on the Iranian nuclear project?

Unlike many commentators, Cohen does not think that an Israeli attack on Iranian facilities is inevitable. Instead, he argues that such a scenario is not evident at all, and should not be taken for granted.

In 1977 then-Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin stated, On no account shall we permit an enemy to develop weapons of mass destruction (WMD) against the Israeli people. This statement, which later became known as the Begin Doctrine, was used to justify the Israeli attacks on the Iraqi nuclear reactor Osirak in 1981, and the bombings on Syrian territory in September 2007.

Now the enemy is Iran. Immediately before the February 2009 elections Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu said, I promise that if I am elected, Iran will not acquire nuclear arms, and this implies everything necessary to carry this out. In other speeches, now-Prime Minister Netanyahu described Iran’s nuclear program as an existential threat for Israel and warned that he would never risk a second Holocaust. Does this rhetoric necessarily bring Israel nearer to war with Iran? Would the prime minister be able to afford to reverse course without losing his credibility?

Despite Israeli anxieties, however, this might be the first time that the application of the Begin Doctrine would invite more problems than advantages. Israel might even find that letting Iran pursue its nuclear program is a lesser evil after all, Cohen suggests.

Cohen highlights three major causes to explain this evolution: the change in perception of the Iranian threat, the actual capabilities of Israeli Air Forces, and the changing stance of United States.

This last point is one of the most obvious. While the Bush administration might have supported an Israeli operation, or at least turned a blind eye to it, the Obama administration has made it eminently clear that Israel would not receive American approval in the event of an attack Iran. The CIA director, dispatched from Washington to Israel, delivered the message that an Israeli strike would create big troubles.

Perhaps Israel might manage to secure the go-ahead to exercise the military option, for instance, by striking sites in Iran to prevent it from developing nuclear weapons. But does Israel have the capability to carry out such a mission?

Abdullah Toukan and Anthony Cordesman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies
in Washington published in May 2009 a detailed study of Israels offensive options. After analyzing all the possibilities, they conclude that, even though Israel is widely believed to have the Middle Easts only nuclear arsenal, a military strike by Israel against Iranian nuclear facilities is possible [but] would be complex and high-risk and would lack any assurances that the overall mission will have a high success rate.

Iraqs Osirak reactor was an easy target. But many Israeli defense experts agree that Iran is not Iraq: Iranian nuclear facilities are said to be underground, and when not, they lie in the midst of a congested civilian population (as in the case of the uranium enrichment facility in Isfahan). It would be impossible to strike such a target without harming thousands of innocent civilians. If Israel decides to target the famous reactor in Bushehr, thousands of Iranians would die immediately due to the contamination released in the air, and hundreds of thousands would later die of cancer. Such an attack against Iran looks like too big a mission for Israel.
Even given Israels reasonable military capacity to strike and inflict heavy damages, the Iranian nuclear program would be probably just be set back a few years, not to mention the Iranian response and the risk of starting a general war, or the prospect of a new series of terrorist attacks led by the Iranian ally, Lebanese Hezbollah. Tzahal does not hide the fact that it would not be able to stand a rainfall of Katioucha or Graad missiles. Even Tel Aviv would be hit. Then again, defense experts say that without a green light from the United States, Netanyahu and Deputy Prime Minister and Defense Minister Ehud Barak will not be able to send in the air force.

As for the perception of the Iranian threat, most of the defense experts do not believe that Iran would run the risk of being destroyed by a second-strike nuclear attack. Israel definitely has the ability to respond to a nuclear attack with powerful nuclear retaliation, thanks to its Dolphin submarines that can launch nuclear-capable cruise missiles. Some Israeli experts, who dont believe that Iran would attack Israel, contend that Iranians act rationally, and Israel is not their first problem. A rising China or the prospect of a Taliban-led Pakistan are of more concern than the Jewish state. Moreover, according to the same experts, as sincere as the Iranian verbal attacks against Israel may be, these tirades also hide something else: Their main aim is to reassure or placate Arab countries by sending the message that the nuclear bomb is not meant for them but exclusively for Israel. This strategy seems to have worked thus far, since no Arab coalition has appeared to fight against this Iranian hegemony policy.
Still, the idea of losing the nuclear monopoly in the region is anathema to Israel. A nuclearized Iran would strengthen its influence in the Middle East and would threaten the so-called moderate Sunni regimes such as Saudi Arabia or Egypt and Jordan, with which Israel signed a peace treaty. This would bring to life one of the major fears for the Israeli government: being surrounded on all sides by fundamentalist regimes hostile to its existence.
The "point of no return" has not yet been crossed in Iranian-Israeli relations. Yet Israels dilemma persists: What is the lesser evil, a nuclear Iran or a preemptive war against it?